Operation of the only park for the agricultural biotech across the nation is ready in Pingtung. To welcome Taiwan’s new age in agriculture, Minister Su Jia-Chyuan of the Council of Agriculture particularly invited the businesses, which have established their factories in the new park, to the groundbreaking ceremony. In the ceremony, Minister Su announced this good news to the public and meanwhile, took bricks to symbolically build this green park to show their perseverance and collaboration with those businesses. Additionally, he demonstrated his strong determination to establish a green silicon valley in southern Taiwan and upgrade Taiwan’ agriculture.

The Council of Agriculture built this new park close to the Chang-Jhih intersection, within Pingtung County, to South 2nd Expressway to promote the competitiveness of Taiwan’s agriculture and reduce the impact due to becoming one of the members of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Until now, this park has attracted 42 firms due to two-year efforts from the preparatory office and they have made an investment with the total capital of NTD 1.86 billion, by now. In spite of low initial-capital requirements, each of them owns unique techniques and can apply the modern technology to Taiwan’s agriculture to create new products or extend their state-of-the-art technologies. In addition, they are helpful to promotion of agricultural production efficiency and improvement of food safety. Simultaneously, farmers can increase their income and consumers can secure their rights through the advanced biotech, development.

The opening ceremony for this new biotech park would be held on December 21 after many firms have made their efforts to finish the infrastructure. This has been the third ceremony since President Chen Shui-Bian hosted the break-ground ceremony on March 27, 2004 and then prime minister Yu hosted the opening ceremony for the preparatory office on October 12, 2003. In addition, those businesses would exhibit their achievements and the produces and specialties of Pingtung County would be sold during the ceremony to celebrate its formal operation. Before the ceremonial activities, the Council of Agriculture invited the chairperson of the Japanese venture capital company to deliver an address at the forum on the agricultural biotech industry on December 14 and holds a the research conference on the Chinese herbs industry on December 16.

In the opening ceremony held on December 21, formal operation of the service center would mark the new milestone for the agricultural biotech park because the first part of the park and early six firms’ factories would be estimated to finish prior to the previous half of 2007. At that time, 20 firms in agricultural biotech would begin with operation like Guang-Chyuan Biotech and Tai-gang Biotech. They would create more than one thousand job opportunities before the end of 2007.

Lifestyle accommodations would be introduced into the building project on this new agricultural biotech park due to the advantages from the climate and land in the south of Taiwan. Trees of different species fragrant wild ginger blossoms are planned for the area. Visitors can feel comfortable about egrets inhabiting the park and its elegant fragrance. In the future, many elites in the biotech industry would work in this shining green silicon valley, which is going to give birth. Taiwanese would be proud of this grand Biotech City, which would attract lots of excellent businesses in both the agriculture and biotech industries.